Patient propagules: Do long-term soil archives preserve legacy fungal and bacterial communities?

Benucci, Gian Maria Niccolò and Gregory Bonito
Plant Soil and Microbial Sciences, MichiganState University, East Lansing, 48824 MI, USA

Presented at the All Scientist Meeting and Investigators Field Tour (2017-10-06 to 2017-10-07 )

Soil is a complex and diverse matrix, populated by billions of microorganisms per cm 3 . Soils at the KBS LTER (Kellogg Biological Station Long-Term Ecological Research) site have been regularly sampled, air-dried and archived. It is unknown how well this process preserves microbial DNA. With this study we assessed the detection capacity of high-throughput next generation sequencing tool (Illumina MiSeq) of microbial ITS (internal transcribed spacer) and 16S rRNA genes in soil across time and identified taxa resistant to temporal archiving. Results showed a higher decrease of fungal respect to bacterial OTU richness with time in deciduous forest and poplar soils. Effects of sampling site and DNA extraction also influenced richness variation. Future research is aimed at 1) identifying factors in soil samples that impact preservation, 2) developing storage methods that may better preserve microbial DNA and 3) testing the viability of propagules through direct isolation.

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